The Strange Life of A Bee: Violence and Bloodshed Before Our Very Eyes

By: Eric Mount

I was walking back to my office the other day when I noticed that my door was shut, which was odd, because it is always propped open. As I came to the door I reached for the handle but was suddenly warned by Gina, a new intern, to take caution. She explained to me that a large bee was flying around in my office and that she had shut the door in an effort to trap him. I thanked her for the warning and concern for my well-being and then cautiously opened the door while my eyes scanned the room for that flying menace.

Within seconds I spotted him overhead, near the lights, carelessly banging on and off of the florescent bulbs. I then propped open the door, turned off the lights, and stepped back into the hallway. I knew that I would quickly be rid of my menace, being that he would not feel comfortable in a dark office and would soon be in search of light, which would cause him to head out of the office and back into the lighted hallway.

But as soon as my plan was put into action, Gina reached over and grabbed the door, slamming it shut, once again trapping the bee back in my office. “No, don’t open the door!” she adamantly told me with a look of concern. “The bee will fly out and into one of the classrooms! You know the kids will get all worked up about it and someone will probably end up getting stung!”

“I know,” I told her with a sigh. “That was my plan.”

After a short discussion with Gina I promised her that I would leave the bee trapped in the office. I then agreed to kill the bee, in order ensure the safety of the delinquents who attend the therapeutic school in which I work.

I was about to head back into my office to commit the murder when I was stopped by one of my students, Adam, at the door. Adam couldn’t help but notice the commotion and desperately wanted to know what was going on. I filled him in about the bee trapped in my office and how the door was closed to prevent it from flying into the classrooms and causing chaos in the school. “Ohhh!” he groaned while rolling his eyes, “You should have let it fly out so it could sting someone!”

“I know,” I told him in complete agreement, “I was going to but I promised Gina that I’d leave it in here and kill it instead.”

Then his eyes brightened. “Can I help?”

Adam is a fifteen-year-old student who displays psychotic features. He has a history of auditory hallucinations and takes multiple medications as a result of his condition. He is also a student of Jiu-Jitsu. He is dedicated and a fairly talented athlete at this violent sport. Because of one of his “pointers,” I now know how to properly snap someone’s neck if the situation were to arise. Before, I was harmless, just a regular joe on the street.

Without question, I instantly decided that he was the perfect student to help me with this task. “Of course,” I said, opening my door for him, “have at it.” Adam dashed into the office and instantly went into a ninja attack mode, jumping around and swatting at the bee without success. The bee made it clear that he wasn’t going down without a fight while he gracefully weaved and bobbed against Adam’s karate chops. I soon realized that this was going nowhere, so I told Adam to stay put while I got him a broom that he could use as a weapon. Adam is only about 5”2, and the bee quickly discovered that he could taunt his short opponent by staying close to the ceiling and out of reach. I had to level the playing field.

I returned with a broom and handed it to Adam, who made quick use of his new weapon. Within minutes he had the bee knocked onto the carpet with a skillful yet powerful swing. The bee had been damaged. He was badly injured and couldn’t fly, but was still in good enough health to move around on the floor like a staggering drunk.

“Now we got him,” Adam proudly said after eyeing the bee on the ground. He then reared back with the broom and swatted the bee with the bristle end, in an effort to finish him off. Only it didn’t work. The bee was still staggering about after taking a brutal attack. Seeing this, Adam again reared back, bringing the broom above his head and came crashing down, this time harder, on the back of the wounded bee.

This time when he lifted the broom, the bee was nowhere to be found. “Alright,” I told him, trying to calm him down. “You got him. He’s stuck in the broom. Shake it around so he’ll fall so we can throw him away.” Adam shook the broom and the bee fell out and bounced across the floor before coming to a stop – only to get up and start walking around.

“Damnit!” Cursed Adam with a look of frustration. “How can that thing still be alive?” I was pretty surprised as well. He had hit the bee with a heavy amount of force, at least with enough force to kill an average two-ounce bee. But this bee must have been different. I thought of the different possibilities and then came to the obvious conclusion that it must be steroids.

Steroids first became popular with the wrestling types, before making the transition into the Olympic crowd. From there the drugs spread like cancer and eventually wound up in professional sports. First it was football, before quickly moving on to take over the baseball scene. From there we saw a trickle down effect into high school sports, followed by the occasional story of a middle school student caught abusing the drugs in an effort to get an early start on the competition. And now, it was painfully obvious, that performance-enhancing drugs had gotten into the hands of the bees, the honey makers.

Then Adam got an idea. “Give me a book or something heavy to hit him with.” He said while his eyes frantically searched the room. “The bristles on the broom are too weak.”

I was about to hand him something of substance but quickly changed my mind. I knew that a book would completely smash and grind the badly beaten bee into the carpet, leaving behind a terrible mess that I wouldn’t clean up. Not to mention blood and bee parts all over one of my books, which I was sure to then throw away. So I decided to stick with the original plan of attack. “Just keep hitting him with the broom,” I said as I took a seat at my desk. “He’s got to die eventually.”

Adam shrugged. He then lifted the broom over his head and brought it violently down on top of the bee, time and time again. After a dramatic surge of attacks he paused to see if the job had been done. It hadn’t. The bee was still staggering around and trying to use it’s now annihilated wings in an attempt to flee the scene. Seeing this, Adam wisely decided to change tactics and started slapping the bee all over the room like a hockey puck, taking slap shots with him that sent him flying off of the walls and chairs. Eventually, Adam squarely connected on a shot that sent the bee ricocheting off the side of my desk before landing on his back in the middle of the room.

After seeing this I got up from my chair to examine the gladiator that Adam had battled so bravely. He was officially dead. The school was safe again. The children could once again walk the halls without fear, where they would be free to converse with one another about terrible music and myspace.

I then glanced up at the clock and came to realize that this had gone on for twenty-five minutes; much longer than I had originally anticipated. I patted Adam on the shoulder, thanking and congratulating him on a job well done. I then took the broom back from him and told him that he should get back to his math class so he could learn something other than broom tactics when fighting a bee in an enclosed office. As Adam was walking out my door, he stopped in his tracks and turned and looked at me. “Will I really ever need algebra when I’m older anyway?” he asked, with a puzzled look on his face.

I paused and thought for a second. “No,” I told him, “No you will not.” I then walked over to the dead bee to figure out how to dispose of the mangled little body. I had the broom but no dustpan, so sweeping him up wasn’t an option. I looked over at my desk and saw a box of Kleenex, but was tired from watching the drawn out battle that had just taken place and wasn’t in the mood to physically pick up the bee. I also didn’t know if his stinger would still work after death and didn’t want to take the risk of getting stung in the hand through the thin Kleenex. So instead, I opened the door and swiftly kicked the bee like a soccer ball out into the hallway.

After sitting back at my desk I began to think. Why do bees have stingers if they die immediately right after they use them? It didn’t make any sense. “Oh,” people will say, “that’s how they protect themselves from predators in nature; they sting if they feel threatened.” But that isn’t a very good explanation. If they are going to die anyway, than there is no point in even defending themselves in the first place. It’s just putting off the inevitable. That’s like a human using a gun that has two barrel’s, each pointed in opposite directions. Fucking pointless.

I decided I would need to do some serious research if I were to ever sleep easy again. I put on a pot of coffee and took a seat at my computer. I was ready to pull an all-nighter if need be, call in sick to work, anything in search of the truth.

Three minutes later my research was complete. I had googled, “why do bees have stingers?” and then read about two-thirds of the first article that popped up. I learned that some bees, like hornets, don’t lose their stingers after an attack and can continue to sting and happily reek terror everywhere throughout their entire lives. It’s only the bees that lose their stinger after an attack who sadly pass away. I also came across an interesting fact that stated only the female bees have stingers. Now, this information was refreshing and interesting to learn, but still didn’t explain the point of the bee dieing after trying to defend itself. How does that continue the survival of the species?

But then, a light bulb went off in my head. Without need of further research, it all made sense. Bees are to the insect world what radical Muslim terrorists are to the human world: Suicide bombers. In the human world, a radical Muslim terrorist kills thirty-five innocent people and himself after detonating a bomb disguised as a briefcase on a crowded bus. He is then transported up to a glorious heaven where seventy-two virgins await him, or something like that.

The bee does just the same. Only the suicide attack on the little boy standing near the garbage can involves the use of a stinger, as opposed to a vest fitted with twenty-five pounds of dynamite. After carrying out her jihad and sending the boy crying to his mother, the bee is then also transported to a land of paradise. One most likely filled with open fields of flowers and sweet pools of honey as far as the eyes can see.